Best of the Web – October

Nov 1st in Web Roundups by Grant Friedman

October was a really exciting month for the vector design community. Adobe released their much anticipated Illustrator CS4. Additionally, there were tons of great tutorials, free downloads and articles written. This roundup features some of the best vector content for the month of October.

Author: Grant Friedman

Grant Friedman is the creative mind behind Colorburned Studios, a freelance graphic and web design firm. Grant got his start as a designer in 1999 when he began drafting electronic newsletters for organizations he was involved with. Over the years he has worked for a number of businesses, organizations, and individuals. His primary design tools are Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks, and InDesign.

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  Illustrator Tutorial: Snowflakes

  It’s that time of year again, the time of year when we stop drawing swimsuits and palm trees and start drawing sweaters, Christmas trees and of course snow flakes. This tutorial from VectorDiary will show you how to design your own snowflake which you can then use in your holiday designs.

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  How to Make a Vector Pattern Brush

  Pattern brushes in Illustrator can be a little tricky sometimes. Getting all your objects to line up perfectly is essential to creating a seamless brush. This tutorial from GoMedia explains how to use Illustrator and Photoshop to create a seamless vector pattern and then convert it to an illustrator brush.

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  Offset Path on Text in Illustrator

  In a previous post Veerle showed us how to apply a line pattern effect to text in Illustrator. In this tutorial she continues that theme by showing us some additional techniques to produce a similar look.

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  Illustrator Trick #7: Aligning to Objects

  Let’s just say you have a square, triangle and a circle that you want to align to their centers. The problem is that you don’t want the square to move? This great little tip from VectorDiary shows us how to align these objects without moving one of the objects.

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  Creative Lighting Techniques

  Bright lights will always draw a crowd, and not just people looking for a good time. Adding atmospheric lighting effects to your illustrations will attract the attention your clients are after. This PDF tutorial from Computer Arts will show you how to produce some beautiful lighting effects.

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(FREE!) Download Picks

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  Mega Electronic Vector Collection

  Don’t spend countless hours painstakingly illustrating an electronic device for your projects. This free set is packed with over 70 high quality vector electronic devices including remote controls, LCD TVs, speakers, monitors, cell phones and many many more.

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  Vector Wood Signs

  These vector wooden signs by DragonArtz and QVectors are really amazing. Vectors like these have about a million and one uses. Include them in your cartoon illustrations or website designs. Download these beautiful vectors and try them for yourself.

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  50 Plaid Pattern Illustrator Swatches

  Here is another set of free vectors that I designed and released on my website. Plaid patterns have always fascinated me so I decided to design a huge set of seamless plaid pattern swatches. These swatches are perfect for fashion design, package design and of course graphic and web design as well.

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  It’s Twitter Time! Free Vector Icon Set

  With a huge and thriving community of designers, Twittering is really becoming the thing to do on the web. Promote your Twitter profile and increase your number of followers by placing a Twitter icon somewhere on your website. Vectors like this are great because they save us the time it would take to illustrate a Twitter graphic from scratch.

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  Free Vectors from VectorStock

  Browse through VectorStock’s new free vector graphics section. There you will find all sorts of useful designs including silhouettes, illustrated cartoon characters, ornaments, buttons and many more types of vector graphics.

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Article and Resource Wrap

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  Adobe Illustrator CS4 Review

  Last month we spent a considerable amount of time talking about the announcement of Illustrator CS4. It’s been a month since then and Illustrator CS4 has since been released. Our friend Rype from Vectips has been working with Illustrator CS4 for over a week now and has posted a review of its functionality and new features.

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  The Evolution of 50+ Logos

  You can learn a lot about the future by looking to the past for guidance. As designers, we spend a lot of time looking at each other’s work for inspiration. Take a look at this inspirational round up of over 50 logos and see how they changed over time.

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  MacBook and MacBook Pro Review

  While this might not be the typical article to be featured in the VECTORTUTS roundup, we included it in this Month’s roundup because so many of our readers are Mac users and may be thinking about upgrading or even making the switch from a PC. Take a look at the review from Engadget and see what you think about the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Or leave a comment about why your PC rocks.

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  123FreeVectors.com

  123FreeVectors.com is a new and growing free stock vector site that launched very recently. Right now there are over 500 free vectors on the site. Take a look at this new vector site; there are tons of really cool designs there.

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